


Benediction

by coincidental



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Background Trent Ikithon, Caleb Widogast-centric, Dom/sub Undertones, Minor Violence, Multi, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 10:37:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coincidental/pseuds/coincidental
Summary: He remembers the hours he spent on his knees at the academy, eyes upturned to the image of The Knowing Mistress, her face interpreted in carefully wrought glass and delicate lines of welding, the temple stone like ice beneath him in the coldest months. Winter sunlight dazzled his eyes and his lips kept their pace with soundless prayers, working through many times repeated phrases. It felt close to the divine, to kneel so, to offer up his devotion over his own desires for warmth, for comfort, for sleep.His lips part to speak now, and he finds he has no words for Mollymauk, only half remembered worship he wants to press to skin.





	Benediction

**Author's Note:**

> This has been knocking around my head for a while. Thanks endlessly to [CrunchyWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrunchyWrites/pseuds/CrunchyWrites) for the beta and to [Cir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuurima/pseuds/shuurima) for enthusiastic comments when I panicked. 
> 
> x

Caleb was brought up, as were many Zemnian children born to working families in the fields, with prayers before bed, blessings before meals, temple on a sunday. The Dawnfather sat on the mantle in his family’s main room, his symbol carved into a wooden pendant at his mother’s throat and on the rustic lintel of their front door.

He believed in the way children tend to, unquestioning and faithful in the footsteps of his betters. Devotion was written into their work, their calm and their celebration. High summer celebrations particularly were a matter of giddy excitement, the preceding weeks abuzz with festival preparations until the inevitable culmination of music, food, dance and laughter, all in the name of Pelor and his grace.

The gifts exchanged were rarely of any extraordinary value, being largely practical or edible, but they were treasured nonetheless - new embroidery on his best jerkin done by his mother that Astrid admired with that slow, handsome smile and dark eyes; sweet stollen, making his fingers sticky with powdered sugar, that he shared with Wulf as their shoulders knocked together in a shadowed corner of the square while their folks drank and danced.

Caleb’s mother told him that things happened as the Dawnfather intended them to and he would guide them. So, with that encouragement in mind, he felt no guilt at the cherry-sweet and sticky press of Astrid’s lips to his in the orchard, her soft mouth and his both stained with the berries’ juice. Nor did he question the way Wulf linked their fingers when they hid in the branches of a tree, stifling their laughter as they hid from the self same girl, Eodwulf’s serious eyes and hard won smile growing closer until Caleb learnt the taste of the curve of his mouth.

It was innocent, shared, found on long summer days together under Pelor’s radiance.

-

The academy did not deny them faith, but it encouraged their devotion to another kind of altar. Caleb had trusted his betters to lead him in worship without reservation and Ikithon had more in mind than the Dawnfather and the paltry prayers of country farm workers’ children. He encouraged their prayers to the Lawbearer or the Knowing Mistress, a devotion to order and knowledge, the very foundations of the empire, he claimed, and of course, he encouraged their devotion to his teaching.

The devout can be strangely swayed by the power of a man who believes his efforts are divine, who carries himself as a holy man and speaks his personal truths as though they are scripture. Caleb, Astrid, and Eodwulf, and the others they studied alongside, were his worthy, zealous acolytes.

Ikithon guided them in all things and it was easy to believe that this man, with his calm gaze, clasped hands and long pristine robes of white and gold was pious, righteous - a figurehead of all the good the Empire could be.

The first time Caleb associated his piety with pain, he believed it must be deserved.

He made a mistake. It was a relatively uncommon occurrence for the fledgling wizard, with his intelligence and obsessive dedication to accuracy making his mistakes almost unheard of. Perhaps that was why he found himself in receipt of a punishment so swift and crippling. The flame he summoned to his fingertips fizzled, his careful assembly of the casting a little awry. Ikithon’s hand settled upon his shoulder with none of its usual paternal manner. It felt heavy as a stone.

“Master Widogast, the empire expects better of your efforts, when so much time is dedicated to your education.” Caleb bowed his head, as though in prayer; a display of penitence. An apology rose to his lips, beginning to form on his tongue and it was always enough, when sincere, until now. “Ah, no need for the apology.” Ikithon’s words cut him short. “The empire has no use for your apologies. It requires your strength and your dedication. You will do your best from here on out, won’t you, Master Widogast?” The affirmation was on Caleb’s lips before he could think twice. _Of course, of course._ “Of course,” Ikithon echoed, his tone ever calm, ever reasonable. “Give me your hand.”

To offer up his hand, pale now from lack of sun and smooth from lack of work, was a thoughtless, trusting gesture. As Ikithon broke his fingers one by one, Caleb gasped his apologies through snot and choked tears. The pain was a divine fury, a fire searing his soul clean of his mistake, his mishap. With every breathless gasp, he promised to be better .

Ikithon was the certainty he clung to as he rode the waves of agony wracking him. His teacher touched his bent head like a benediction.

“Through this pain you will learn, young master Widogast. Embrace it and turn it into a productivity and passion the empire can be proud of, that _I_ can be proud of.” Caleb sobbed wretchedly even as he bent his head and stumbled over his fervoured promises with the taste of salt and iron hot on his tongue.

The fire that he moulded to his purpose was his prayer, his fervent devotion. He learnt again with fingers that cried out at each subtle gesture so that when they healed, the casting was easier than breathing; he praised Ioun for the gift of this knowledge, that pain could forge strength and better learning.

Fervour stole the shape of him away, cast aside emerging muscle tone from hard work on the farm, devoured the sun kissed touch of Pelor’s golden light from his freckled skin, took the labour worn callouses from his palms and replaced them with ink stains and softness, blotted out the summer of his eyes and burnt them with the consuming flame of zealotry.

Caleb ran through his spells like they were prayer beads, found his solace in obeying dutifully, in offering his soul on bended knee to the Empire and to Ikithon, stood over him like some benevolent yet vengeful God himself.

The empire’s preaching left Caleb’s childhood home a smouldering pyre as he cleansed it with flame and burnt out the rot that threatened the sanctity of the belief he clung to. Pelor’s symbol burned in the darkness, far from the Dawnfather’s grieving, sad eyes. The young war mage, Ikithon’s symbol pinned to his breast, stood dusted with the ash of his biggest mistake and turned his eyes from the flames.

-

When the onslaught of memory stopped, when the gaunt man with the trembling hands felt a sense of place returning to him, it was with the sickening knowledge that any Gods he had ever prayed to had surely abandoned him here, here with his frail trembling heart, his scarred fingers and his mistakes. Wretched, he staggered into the world with no hope of redemption, only the knowledge that his life was not worth the horror his piety had wrought.

-

When Caleb meets Mollymauk, he thinks perhaps he can be turned to darker purposes once more, the tiefling riling his anger so readily he feels the fire leap to his grasp. He douses the flames with the memory of a house’s black bones against a pastel dawn sky.

Like any man torn from his faith, Caleb finds he swings between erraticism and fanatical obsessive behaviours - neither are healthy, but so much of what he feels comes back to the tiefling, to his obnoxious, attention seeking antagonism.

When Caleb is consumed by flame, by memory, by the ghost of Ikithon’s voice in his ear and the phantom pain of broken fingers and screams. When he is lost, Mollymauk’s kiss to his forehead, though brief, is a moment of grace, cutting through the darkness like a divine thing. Caleb breathes again, like there is no smoke in his lungs, like he _deserves_ to catch his breath.

Something shifts between them after that.

Eyes linger before touches do, but the latter is just as inescapable. It's that feeling a few drinks deep that sounds like _inevitable_ and feels even more so, with Mollymauk’s tail curling around Caleb’s ankle beneath the table and Caleb’s hand a brand on Mollymauk’s knee.

Molly glances at him, something sideways and sly with a flash of tongue over bruised plum lips, another glimpse of sharp white teeth, eyes glowing like embers as they catch the light of the candles. Caleb’s heart pounds and he itches to pray, clammy palms and dry mouth an accompaniment to his racing thoughts.

Mollymauk leans in, lips brushing the shell of Caleb’s ear as he murmurs,“I think perhaps, it’s time we left darling, don’t you? Or do you want to continue to play this game?”

Caleb’s eyes find Nott, deep in her cups and almost asleep tucked up to Jester’s side. The rest are appropriately occupied. There are no reasons to say no. It is at once exhilarating and horrifying.

“I have no, ah, desire to play this game any more than you,” Caleb murmurs in turn, his accent heavy and voice quiet. It’s not entirely true - it’s a half truth. If he thought he were safe to dance around whatever _this_ promised to be a little longer, he would. He’d buy some time and try to understand better what he wanted, what _Mollymauk_ might want from this - the latter of those he could not even guess at.

Molly’s answer is a smirk curling from his sharp smile, eyes narrowing in a smug, catlike contentment. Caleb finds himself tugged from their booth by a warm hand, fingers linked together and palms pressed close. If any of their friends take notice, and Caleb is sure they do, they do not catcall or comment, not the way the man might expect them to.

Away from the bright epicentre of the tavern, the stairwell to the upper floors is dimly lit and close. Mollymauk is a couple of steps ahead on the stairs, the lean figure he cuts in the shadows a fey thing. Caleb is both surprised and not at all when the tiefling leans down, towering over him with the advantage of the stairs, and tilts his chin up to meet a firm press of their lips.

For the first kiss they share, it’s not at all what Caleb expects. There’s no hesitation or fumbling, just the practiced angle of Mollymauk’s head to account for his horns and the deliberate meeting of damp, warm mouths. Molly kisses him like he’s won something, greedy and forward, tongue thrusting into his open mouth. It makes heat pool in Caleb’s belly and butterflies erupt in his chest, hammering at the inside of his ribcage with fervent abandon.

As they part, Caleb can see Molly’s smile in the half light, a shark's grin of sharp white teeth. He feels out of his depth, but that feeling is at least familiar.

Their linked fingers drop as they approach the room door and make their way inside. Molly closes it behind them and arches a brow at Caleb with his hand on the sliding lock. That Mollymauk checks makes Caleb grateful, makes it feel less like he is being locked in, more like they are locking people out. He nods and the metal bolt makes a quiet scrape and dull snick as it settles in place.

Stood a few foot from the bed, Caleb watches Mollymauk turn and reach out to twist the knob on a lamp, bringing his angular features into sharp relief with the yellow-orange glow of the light. It limns the lavender tones of him a deep amethyst shot with gold and lights a spot of a flame in the deep red garnets of his eyes. He is, unavoidably, inarguably, beautiful. Something of him puts Caleb in mind of stained glass, of kneeling in temple and being bathed in the colour the sunlight paints through the picture windows. The gravity of the feeling has him echoing the memory and he sinks to his knees, as though in prayer, his eyes not leaving Mollymauk for a moment.

Mollymauk seems to consider him there, on his knees, head tilted and a quizzical expression flickering briefly across his features, replaced rapidly with a heat and satisfaction that sets his tail to flicking like a cat about to pounce. Beneath Caleb’s knees, the floor is cool, hard, unyieldingly uncomfortable.

He remembers the hours he spent on his knees at the academy, eyes upturned to the image of The Knowing Mistress, her face interpreted in carefully wrought glass and delicate lines of welding, the temple stone like ice beneath him in the coldest months. Winter sunlight dazzled his eyes and his lips kept their pace with soundless prayers, working through many times repeated phrases. It felt close to the divine, to kneel so, to offer up his devotion over his own desires for warmth, for comfort, for sleep.

His lips part to speak now, and he finds he has no words for Mollymauk, only half remembered worship he wants to press to skin.

Mollymauk steps towards him slowly, a predators cautious approach, booted feet making no sound in their rolling tread. Caleb waits, waits until there’s a light drag of warm fingers along his jaw, the briefest unintentional scrape of nails, the slow rub of a thumb across his cheekbone. Molly tilts his head up, just a little more, the angle awkward, so their eyes meet.  


“Don’t you look lovely on your knees for me, darling,” Mollymauk teases, a smile curving his mouth that is all satisfaction. His thumb presses to Caleb’s lower lip and he kisses it. Mollymauk’s free hand strays to his leggings, to the lacings, tugging them loose with deft fingers, his eyes not leaving Caleb’s. “Tell me this is what you want. I need to hear it,” Molly says, a quiet expectation of compliance in his tone. Molly expects his response, knows his response, but asks anyway.

“I- I want it.” Caleb doesn’t dare avoid Mollymauk’s searching gaze when he murmurs his reply, presses another lingering kiss to the tiefling’s thumb.

Mollymauk’s quiet grunt of appeasement is punctuated by the press of the digit on Caleb’s lower lip into his mouth, pressing down a little on his tongue and coaxing his mouth open. He offers no resistance to the touches, only swallowing a little awkwardly, eyes tearing - though he doesn’t quite gag it’s a near thing. Molly’s considering sound is turned over with a little narrowing of his eyes and a slow smile.

“If you need to stop, tell me, or tap me.” Caleb nods, just a fraction. “Good boy. Suck.” Molly’s voice is low, something a little rough and removed from his normal sharply sarcastic sing song cadence. It is not a tone Caleb feels any desire to disobey.

He sucks on Mollymauk’s thumb with a silent, single minded focus, lashes dipping down to shadow the bruised tiredness beneath his eyes as the lids close, shutting out the tiefling’s stained glass beauty. Molly’s skin tastes a little of ale, spilled from a cup to his hand, and a little of salt. Caleb steals both flavours with drags of his tongue and a hollowing of his cheeks until all there is is the bland normality of skin.

He hears, as though at a great distance, a huff of breath that’s almost a laugh and Mollymauk’s murmured, “Gods, your mouth, darling.” The thumb is dragged slowly from his mouth and he hollows his cheeks, as though that might change its inexorable retreat. He parts his lips, a soft sound of protest readied, but Molly hushes him, tsk-ing quietly. “You’ll get what you want.” A moment of shifting fabric later and Caleb feels a light touch to his lower lip. “Open wider, hmm?” It’s easy to, to relax his jaw and trust, trust absolutely in this moment as he feels the easy slick drag of what can only be Mollymauk’s cock, hard and hot, against his tongue. The taste is heavy - salt and something more.

Caleb does not think he moves, thinks Mollymauk must have instead, as he finds himself breathing in sharp little inhalations through his nose, the cool touch of metal brushing the back of his palate, mouth full. He groans softly, working his tongue in easy exploration of the unfamiliar ridges along the length of Molly, even as the tiefling sets a slow easy rhythm, thrusting almost lazily into the wet heat of Caleb’s mouth.

“Fuck, you’re so sweet.” Mollymauk pants a little, curses in Infernal, the word triggering a jarring, unsettling little twinge of discomfort that somehow doesn’t put Caleb off one bit. “You can be good for me can’t you, darling? Show me how good you can be?” Caleb feels Molly’s thrusts lengthen, pressing that bit further that bit more insistently, a steady gently hand stroking from his cheek back into the messy tangle of his hair and down to settle possessively heavy on the back of his neck.

With just a little pressure, Caleb takes what’s being given and swallows right down until his eyes water a little. He’s light headed, drifting on the feeling that encompasses him. Something about the sense of peace that settles through him when he accepts the feeling, swallows, stops trying to drag in a breath that won’t come, feels an awful lot like worship.

He’s hard but that need is distant, lost somewhere beneath the thunder of his pulse in his ears and the way Molly curses and calls him beautiful in the same breath.

He doesn’t know how long it is but his jaw aches, and when Mollymauk commands him, “Open your eyes, look at me, Caleb,” he finds his his lashes are wet and clumped with a smear of tears. His knees are both numb and yet throbbing with a dormant pain, waiting for him to move. And yet... there’s the quiet croon of Mollymauk’s voice as he shifts his fingers against Caleb’s scalp and his murmurs; “You’re so good.”

It’s better than the relief of stretching his aching limbs would be, and better than any kind of climax. Molly’s fingers card through his hair with the lightest tug of pain and it feels like benediction and Caleb is, for a moment, forgiven utterly, for all he has done.

Unable to close his eyes now with Mollymauk’s burning gaze focused on him he stares up through his wet lashes, watching the tiefling bare his sharp teeth and pant shaking breaths, the rock of his hips growing rough and sharp, snapping to a stuttering halt with a curse and a breathless laugh. Nose pressed to Molly’s skin, the tickle of neat hair beneath it, he tries to inhale and falters, gagging briefly as he swallows. He could have pulled away, Molly wouldn’t have stopped him, but it feels more right to take what he’s given.

In his hair, Mollymauk’s grip gentles again, long elegant fingers scraping long nails lightly against his scalp, coaxing him back, easy and steady. Caleb breathes in deeply and finds himself coughing; an inelegant sound, a graceless end.

“ _Easy_ , Caleb, _breathe_ ,” Molly murmurs with a low laugh and Caleb feels the touch shift down to his back, rubbing slow circles. Mollymauk touches his cheek and tilts his face.

At some point Molly must have crouched, because his face is at eye level, his soft cock tucked back into the open lacing of his garish leggings. His face contorts in a look of concern and Caleb feels a thumb smoothly swipe across his cheek. It smears damply. He gasps then and realises the sound is wet, choked with tears, rolling down his cheeks. He interrupts Mollymauk even as the he parts bruised mauve lips to comment.

“It’s okay,” he rasps, “I’m okay, I swear.” Mollymauk’s dubious expression falters a little, but the bemused twist to his mouth is still tight with concern.

“Get on the bed with me,” he suggests, quiet, “let me make you feel good darling.”

Caleb had forgotten about his own needs, drifting in the devotion of being on his knees and giving himself up wholly. It seems selfish, even now, to search out a completion for himself.

His expression must speak volumes he has not yet voiced, because Molly ducks in to kiss him. The kiss is a slow, intimately filthy meet of lips and tongues. Caleb tastes the salt of his own tears.

“Let me make you feel good,” Mollymauk repeats, fingers stroking gently through Caleb’s hair now in repetitive, rhythmic touches. “I don’t have a habit of leaving partners unsatisfied. You wouldn’t ruin my excellent reputation would you, Caleb, darling?” Huffing a soft, hesitant, amused sound, Caleb replies with a soft kiss, slowly allowing Mollymauk to tug him to his feet.

The movement ignites a pain in Caleb’s aching knees that is grounding in the surreality of being able to link his fingers with Mollymauk’s in such a familiar way. His steps to the bed are slow, not for reticence, but instead for the pain that lances down from the abused joints. He says not a word.

The pain is a familiar gift, granted by hours of prayer when it was not offered through his teachers. Through pain he learns, through pain he finds solid ground beneath his feet. Pain is familiar and it is ugly but it is divine, a reminder of his fragile, feckless humanity, a quiet gift. It sharpens his gaze on the lamp lit tiefling as he is laid back onto the mattress like he is made of glass, worthy of gentle hands.

Caleb lifts his head to meet Mollymauk’s kiss and arches into the slow slide of the his warm hand into Caleb’s smallclothes. Molly’s hand on him steals his breath like a blow to the the stomach.

“Yeah? Good? Like this?” Caleb cannot find the words so he nods, accepting the kisses bestowed on him again and again. He maps the shape of Molly’s face beneath his hands, his angular jaw, the high arch of his cheekbones, the smooth indent of his dimples and the curve of his mouth, committing the shapes of him to memory, reverent as he gasps his awe in panting moans against Mollymauk’s mouth, writes it in needy twists of his bucking hips.

Completion finds him like a bolt of lightning, the curvature of his spine obscene as he arches from the bed, sobbing weakly into the kiss Mollymauk stifles him with, Molly’s deft hand working him through the shuddering aftershocks.

Steadying a slow hand down his spine, like he’s a creature to be soothed, Mollymauk eases Caleb in to rest against him. The warm palm resettles after a moment, splayed on the back of Caleb’s neck like a brand. It helps him to breathe, his face bowed and hidden in the secret hollow curve of Mollymauk’s neck. There’s a peace here, like the darkened alcoves of temple where he could confess his fears and offer his praises in solitude. He presses his lips to Molly’s throat there in a wordless prayer, instilling within it his gratitude, or so he hopes.

There’s a shift as Molly adjusts himself for comfort, then Caleb feels the slow press of lips to his forehead.

It is not the first time Mollymauk has kissed him like this and he thinks it will not be the last. It feels like a moment of grace. It is the golden light of Pelor dappling on his shoulders as he walks through the orchards of his childhood, the comfort of saying his prayers in an echo of his mother before bed, the solid sanctity of home in a world that tosses him about as though he were a boat on stormy seas. It rekindles Caleb’s faith like a flint sparking to flame.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please spare a moment to leave some kudos or a comment, it means the world <3
> 
> x


End file.
